Poetry and Symbols

Jonathan Mayhew often puts thing wonderfully succinctly. Here's a recent comment of his that I can wholeheartedly affirm, from a post on Lorca and "symbols":

"I don't see poetry as a process of encoding ideas in symbols that the reader then must decode. I understand why anyone who is taught that this is what poetry is might grow up to hate poetry."

As I quoted Lorca a few days ago: "I'll let you know what I see there. Just don't ask me to explain it."

Tricked Out Like a Poet

"I'll let you know what I see there. Just don't ask me to explain it." ("In the Forest of the Lunar Grapefruits")

*

Clock Echo

I sat down
in a clearing in time.
It was a pool of silence.
White silence.
Incredible ring
where the bright stars collide
with a dozen floating
black numbers.

*

Might as well say star
as orange.
Riverbed as sky.

("South")

*

By day, the farmhand's
guitar,
by night, Pierrot's
mandolin.

("Three Crepuscular Poems II")

*

And so the boat stops.
There's a rhythmless peace
& I scamper on deck
tricked out like a poet.

("Dreams")

Federico Garcia Lorca, Suites, tr. Jerome Rothenberg, Green Integer, 2001